rather
to suggest that she might have come after the spoons.

"The doctor's out," she announced somewhat truculently. Then, before
Sara had time to formulate any reply, she added, a thought more
graciously: "Maybe you're a stranger to these parts. Surgery hour's not
till six o'clock."

She was evidently fully prepared for Sara to accept this as a dismissal,
and looked considerably astonished when the latter queried meekly:

"Then can I see Miss Selwyn, please? I understand Mrs. Selwyn is an
invalid."

"You're right there. The mistress isn't up for seeing visitors. And Miss
Molly, she's not home--she's away to Oldhampton."

"But--but----" stammered Sara. "They're expecting me, surely? I'm Miss
Tennant," she added by way of explanation.

"Miss Tennant! Sakes alive!" The woman threw up her hands, staring
at Sara with an almost comic expression, halting midway between
bewilderment and horror. "If that isn't just the way of them," she went
on indignantly, "never mentioning that 'twas to-day you were coming--and
no sheets aired to your bed and all! The master, he never so much as
named it to me, nor Miss Molly neither. But please to come in, miss--"
her outraged sense of hospitality infusing a certain limited cordiality
into her tones.

The woman led the way into a sitting-room that opened off the hall,
standing aside for Sara to pass in, then, muttering half-inaudibly,
"You'll be liking a cup of tea, I expect," she disappeared into the back
regions of the house, whence a distant clattering of china shortly gave
indication that the proffered refreshment was in course of preparation.

Sara seated herself in a somewhat battered armchair and proceeded to
take stock of the room in which she found herself. It tallied accurately
with what the hall had led her to expect. Most of the furniture had been
good of its kind at one time, but it was now all reduced to a drab level
of shabbiness. There were a few genuine antiques amongst it--a couple
of camel-backed Chippendale chairs, a grandfather's clock, and some
fine old bits of silver--which Sara's eye, accustomed to the rare and
beautiful furnishings of Barrow Court, singled out at once from the
olla podrida of incongruous modern stuff. These alone had survived the
general condition of disrepair; but, even so, the silver had a neglected
appearance and stood badly in need of cleaning.

This latter criticism might have been leveled with equal justice at
almost everything in